Family Boardgame Night

Tonight was another family boardgaming night here at Mr Papa’s World. We had some serious fun playing Apples to Apples tonight. If you have never played this game, its great for a night of good, clean family fun.

The game of Apples to Apples is played with two decks of specialized cards. Both the red apple deck and the green apple deck, have a word on them. The word may be a person, a place, a thing or just some random word. Each player gets 7 red apples card to form their hand. The green apple deck rotates around the table from player to player. The current player with the green apple card is called the judge.

Each turn, the judge draws a green apple card and reads the definition of the word. Each player then takes a red apple card from their hand that best matches the green apple word and plays it on the table face down. The decision on which red apple card to play must be made quickly. The judge gathers up the red apple cards and shuffles them. He/She then puts each one face up and reads the word. After all have been displayed, the judge picks the card that best matches the played green apple card. Whoever played the picked red apple card, is declared the hand winner and collects the green apple card as bounty. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 8 green apple cards.

This game can get very funny. Sometimes you don’t have a card that even comes close to matching. As the judge, you can have fun reading your choices. I think it also teaches the kids some vocabulary as they are definitely learning some new words.

There is also a bunch of variants of the game you can play. In crab apple, instead of playing the closest matching red apple card, you play the most opposite or outrageous card. This one is really funny. In 2 for 1 apples, the judge plays two green apple cards. The players then play the red apple card from their hand that best matches both of the green apple cards. There is a bunch of other versions too.

This game also scales very well for large groups. We have played this game with 11 people and it was still very fun. The object of the game, number of green apple cards won, varies by the number of players in the game. If you are looking for some family boardgame fun, this one is a definite winner.